Building trades making a comeback in Rockford area

Sunday

Jun 15, 2014 at 5:00 AM

By Matt TrowbridgeRockford Register Star

ROCKFORD — Rockford’s building boom is long gone.

So is the city’s recent dormant building period.

“It’s been pretty dismal the past five years,” said Brad Long, president of the Northwestern Illinois Building Trades Council, but jobs done by welders, plumbers, electricians, pipefitters, roofers, masons, plasterers, painters, glazers, heavy equipment operators and other members of the building trades are “finally coming back.”

“It’s not over at all,” Rock Valley College President Mike Mastroianni said. “It just looks different. The manufacturing trades of old are over, but manufacturing isn’t by any means.

“There are three things you do that create wealth in a community: You mine it, you manufacture it or you grow it. We have two of the three here. The region is not going to go down the tubes at all. People just have to rebrand how they think of things.”

That starts with people not thinking the choice is between education and working in the building trades. Mastroianni and others say the best choice might be to combine education and a career in the building trades — a path that equals no debt and a steady job through apprenticeship programs, which are the best way to get into the trades.

Greg Harle, who runs the apprenticeship program for Plumbers & Pipefitters Local 23, said they have been taking “six to 15 new apprentices every year for the past four years” after not taking any the previous two years.

Apprentices in Local 23 start at $17.24 an hour (40 percent of the pay of a journeyman union worker, which is $43.10 an hour). Pay goes up 10 percent each year for the next four years, before jumping to full pay in the final year of the five-year apprenticeship program.

Apprentices complete more than 250 hours of classroom work and more than 1,600 hours of on-the-job training to earn the increase.

Local 23 apprentices also earn 32 hours of credits at Highland Community College in Freeport. And, because apprentices need 1,600 hours of on-the-job training each year, Local 23 makes sure they work an average of 30 hours a week.

“We haven’t had any apprentices short hours in a couple of years,” Harle said. “If the employers find good help with an apprentice, they want to make sure they keep them employed.”

That means the minimum an apprentice can earn in the first year is $27,584. And he or she would earn double that, $55,168, in the fourth year of the five-year apprenticeship.

With no school debt.

“It’s earn while you learn,” Long said. “And it’s also rigorous training. There is no substitute for it.”

Local 23 accepts apprentice applications, and a $20 fee, the second weeks of October, November, December and January at its office on 4525 Boeing Drive in Rockford. An aptitude test is given in February. Applicants who score at least 60 percent on the test qualify for a interview in April. Scores from the test and interview are combined, with the highest total scores accepted.

Last year, 12 of 107 applicants got in.

“The bare minimum you need is a high school diploma or GED and one year of standard algebra,” Harle said. “Math is essential. Our entire trade is math.

“Any welding classes, refrigeration classes or electrical classes are going to help as well.”

That’s where schools like Highland and RVC come in.

“Welding is huge right now,” Mastroianni said. “Woodward is going to be looking for 1,500 people in a couple of years,” including welders. “I can’t run enough classes. I’m filled day and night with welding school graduates.

“Almost anything you do in the aviation industry is going to require something that has to do with welding. Pick a company, they are all doing some sort of welding. Regionally, it’s huge. We even have some people recruit our graduates before they even complete our program. They are looking for them that badly.”

RVC offers what’s known as stackable credits: “It’s almost like a fast-track program to do things like machining, programming mill and lathe, and have that translate into college credit. It’s something to get you into an internship or a job right away but also help your long-term future if you go back to college from your short-term work experience.”

Long said the short-term future for trades in Rockford is suddenly bright, with government and commercial construction jobs, although residential construction remains down. Harle said all 40 Local 23 apprentices are working commercial jobs, not residential.

“Some of the jobs are coming back,” Long said. “All the school work with the referendum that passed last year. We’ve got Woodward going great guns. A lot of road work. Potentially three Meijer stores now, maybe even a fourth in Freeport. You add in a FedEx project and there are a lot of reasons to be optimistic.

“Last year you couldn’t point to a bunch of projects that were happening. It’s not immediate, but we’re going to get to a point sometime late in the summer where we’re going to be scrambling for manpower.”